Occasionally highly unexpected words turn up on the ‘most-searched-for’ list put out by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.
And this is one of them.
‘Amontillado’ is originally a Spanish word for a medium-dry sort of sherry.
It is described by the Merriam-Webster people as ‘a Spanish fortified wine with a distinctive nutty flavour.’
If you find this word a bit puzzling and are wondering how it’s pronounced, I will try to explain.
The Oxford says there are two accepted pronunciations in standard English.
The first is the anglicised version of uh-mon-tuh-LAH-doh, while the other is a bit closer to the Spanish original as uh-mon-tuh-YAH-doh (it seems that the Spanish wouldn’t pronounce the ‘L’ in the middle).
The sherry (and the word) come from the region of Spain where it is produced.
It turns out that Montilla is the name of a town in Andalusia, in southern Spain, where the wine is made.
But why are Americans suddenly looking up this odd name for a not-very-common sherry?
That question also puzzles the experts at the Merriam-Webster, who say the only thing they can think of is ‘the word features prominently in a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, and it is spooky season, after all.’
In other words, it’s just been Halloween, so a heap of Americans are looking up a word from a spooky short story by Poe.
On the subject of Edgar Allan Poe’s shivers-down-the-spine stories, American journalist Holly Taylor writes, ‘I think my favourite is “The Cask of Amontillado.” To summarize, it’s a tale of revenge in which a man tricks his acquaintance into getting sealed inside a vault, using the promise of amontillado wine as the lure into the trap.’
So, was her article enough to explain this rush of ‘look-ups’ on the Merriam-Webster website?
Surely not, since she writes for a local newspaper in North Carolina.
So, the reason for this burst of interest in ‘amontillado’ is as mysterious (as spooky?) as the word itself.
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